Sometimes getting rich is just luck…

I know people here won’t believe me, but I have been actively involved in our capitalistic system for about 25 years…working in the trenches as a sales person. I even started a company that at on time employed 17 people (down to about 8, but that is another story).

I say this because I want people to understand that I know what the “real world” is all about in terms of how to make money and certainly about paying taxes. And often times the conservative virtues of “hard work” and “free markets” just don’t pay off. Hell, it’s all about taking risks and most of the time risks fail to pay off (it wouldn’t be risky if it always paid off, would it?).

That’s why I’m a proud FDR Democrat, the President who saved our market system from itself. Despite the rhetoric here, liberals are not communists, we just understand that Capitalism has some rough edges that government has to smooth over for the majority of people who don’t get rich in this system…like fighting to give every citizen basic health care in the richest country on earth.

But my post is not about that. No it’s to point out that sometimes hard work has very little to do with upward economic mobility…